I saw one as I was packing up to go. He was on some bag or another of mine. I was afraid he was going to get smushed in all our moving around so I tried to relocate him to a more open space, but he was pretty fiesty and would try to grab me with his front leg/arms/claws (whatever you want to call them). So I just let him be and tried to avoid stepping on him.

We had one in our camp, but unfortunately we found it too late. It was all dried up and barely moving, then it passed on before our eyes as we tried to gently revive it with water. Although it was dying, it looked at peace with its arms in its namesake prayer position, resting its head on them.

In '99 my friend and I found a real praying mantis sitting on a 12 ft tall dinosaur woodcutout praying mantis, like it was its mother or something.

Had one very confused one in our camp for about half a day. Kept flying around the same area very frantically. Feeling a need to do something, I placed it on a paper plate with a little water puddle. I later relocated him to a more open space.

Saw one at Authority and Literal at Group W. They had a curious setup with a table with a tapedeck, two speakers and a table lamp. Music was playing, but nobody was there, so it had a somewhat surreal ambience. On closer inspection I found a praying mantis on one of the speakers bopping its head around to the beat of the music!

those things are my most feared creature on earth. i didn't see any this year, but last year one camped out on the side of our dome and frightened the shit outta me.

this year, our lights attracted millions of tiny fruit-fly like bugs. they were dust-coloured, not black. they covered every inch of our sleeping space and clothes left out but died in the heat of the next day. did anyone else get this?

olivia wrote:those things are my most feared creature on earth. i didn't see any this year, but last year one camped out on the side of our dome and frightened the shit outta me.

this year, our lights attracted millions of tiny fruit-fly like bugs. they were dust-coloured, not black. they covered every inch of our sleeping space and clothes left out but died in the heat of the next day. did anyone else get this?

My camp had both a mantis and "fruit flies", although there were far more of the flies than the poor single mantis could be expected to cope with.

Personally, I love mantids for the same reason I love ladybugs, soldier beetles and spiders, they all eat pests. But I find mantids especially elegant.

Been waiting to tell this story: Mooping at the trash fence this year, I found a green one on his back. R.I.P., I thought, and went to put him/her into the bag. Legs feebly grabbed on the side, but no more struggle was left. So I processed this moral dilemma: The damn thing ain't gonna make it, and I can just assume the inevitable, drop it to the bottom of the bag and move on. But it's still alive, dammit! That trace of life deserves respect. But I'm not gonna try to intervene to be some sort of emergency mantis rescue person, either.

So I pulled it out of the bag and set it down on the fence, facing down to be in its own shade at least. Poored a pool of water around it, where the plastic of the fence would keep it from soaking in. Then adios, mantis.

A little further on I found another of the beasties farther along the arc o' life than the previous one. Stone dead, in fact. After my previous considering, though, I decided to leave it where it was. I was a helluva lot more out of place than it was.

We saw a beautiful, large, plump one walking around on one of our tents. It was a beautiful pale shade, somewhere between yellow, white and playa dust colored. We inspected it for a while. It was really weird being in such a human created and dominated environment, and not having seen a single animal or plant for 5 playadays. Later whilst breaking down camp I saw dried out crispy one, hoped it was a different one. Guess the sightings again this year dispelled the possibility that they had hitched a ride in on a truck or whatnot last year, a rumour/hypothesis abounding on last year's eplaya.

Last year I had one land in my lap just sitting in camp. This year I saw a couple of them, one came right to me. then just yesterday I found one climbing on my tent after I washed off the playa dust. I don't know if it rode all the way home with me in my gear or what, but I put it on my tomato plants to kill any bugs it can find.

I totally understand fear of scary looking bugs, but really, praying mantises are about as docile to humans as a bug can get.

I have a totally rational fear of wasps. I've been stung on my nipple, the soft part of my thigh and on the tip of my penis by fucking wasps. Ouch. And I really wasn't doing anything provocative. Well, not as far as a human would be concerned. Fuckin tiny brains. I could have explained...apologized or something, but would the goddamn wasp listen? NOOOOO!

The mantis, I just put it on my arm, let it crawl up to my shoulder as I walked over to the garden, and dropped it off in the tomato patch.

When I was finally dropped off at my house back in Portland, I was greeted by my housemate and we stood on the porch for a bit to talk about my experiences. As we were standing there, I looked over at the railing and, lo and behold, there was a praying mantis sitting there waiting for me as well! It was quite a moment for me being that I had been talking about taking back all of the feelings and ideas I had developed over the week back with me from the playa. I felt like the mantis was an obvious symbol of that. A big part of my experience over the week had been about me reconsidering the notion that the universe was an unfeeling, undirected place and that there was possibly Something bigger going on. I know, I know....this sounds kinda lame but the experiences don't really lend themselves well to being retold. Anyhow, this mantis was all the confirmation I needed that I should indeed be more flexible about my understanding of how Life works.

Yeah, my girlfriend had one of the fucking things bite her! Drew blood! Fucking little goddamn thing. I hate bugs! The lack of pests is one of the great things about the playa. Goddamn bugs. Die all of you, I say. And hey, wasn't this topic about getting stung? You mean all the rest of you didn't get bit? That little fucking bug just picked her to bite? Now I'm really pissed at that stupid-ass little crawly monster. Rotten-ass bug.

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."